Our Story

We believe with our thrust and focus on sustainability approach and strategy we can advance both our business outcome and those of people, host communities and environment surrounding us.

The extractive industry is one of the key contributors to modern society as, without raw materials, the lifestyle that so many of us enjoy today would not be possible. The resources we bring to market have a myriad of uses, creating the basic building blocks of society: iron ore is used in the construction of transport networks and building infrastructure; copper is used to connect people through telecommunications and in lifesaving medical devices, and aluminium is used across a myriad of products, including protecting foodstuffs from spoiling, and helping to reduce fuel emissions as a lightweight material for automobiles. In addition, we generate electricity that lights millions of people's lives and our crude oil is an essential component of thousands of secondary products.

In addition to the valuable products and infrastructure our resources enable, our operations make a significant, positive contribution to the society and economies where we operate. This includes directly and indirectly employing over 67,000 people, contributing to the betterment of over 2.8 million people's lives through our community programmes and contributing over Rs 29,000 crores to state revenues across the globe.

As part of the Vedanta Group, we have always been process oriented, underpinning our rigour with a spirit of entrepreneurship. We see sustainable development as a core requirement to strategically improve the value of our business - both by managing risk and improving our operating standards. Our approach to sustainability mirrors our prevailing business ethos of achieving excellence through continuous improvement in our processes and outcomes, while also bench marking ourselves against our global peers.

Responsible Stewardship

Responsible Stewardship means ensuring we have effective and appropriate business processes, including robust compliance and risk management, protecting the health and safety of our employees and responsibly managing our environmental and social impacts.

Building Strong Relationships

Building Strong Relationships captures our engagement with the people and organisations that are interested in our business. Doing this effectively can lead to the identification of new areas where we can find and unlock additional value as well as equipping us to foresee and appropriately manage challenges.

Adding and Sharing Value

Adding and Sharing Value encapsulates the direct and indirect positive economic impact we make, by investing in people through employment, building infrastructure, developing technology and the payment of taxes, royalties and other payments to local, state and national governments. Additionally, it captures the value we offer by turning the knowledge and ideas sourced through engagement with our stakeholders into specific projects, including collaborating with governments and NGOs to bring value to the communities that host our operations.

Strategic Communications

The Strategic Communication pillar interlocks with the other three pillars of our model, and is the guiding principle which enables the organisation to engage with our stakeholders in a transparent dialogue. This pillar is the vital element of sustainable development, in implementing and strengthening our 'license to operate' efforts. This pillar further reflects our commitment to becoming a more transparent and responsible corporate citizen.

Our four pillars guide our stakeholder engagement and help us to build trusted relationships. As a consequence of these engagements and to respond to stakeholders’ areas of interest we developed our Sustainable Development Framework. The Framework comprises policies, technical standards, management standards and guidance notes across the pillars to establish clear standards, set targets for improving performance and maximise value to our stakeholders.

We follow the same policies and sustainability standards as laid down by our parent company Vedanta Resources plc. In 2011-12, Vedanta introduced the business Sustainable Development Framework (including suite of sustainability policies, management and technical standards) to evolve all of its group companies' approach to managing business sustainably.

Through the implementation of the Framework, we can advance both our business outcomes and those of the communities and environment that surround us by offering significant benefits beyond our operations. Since introducing our Sustainable Development model and supporting Vedanta Sustainability Framework, we have acted to implement them across the business. Each Group company has conducted a gap analysis of our existing management systems (ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001 and some to SA 8000 certification) with respect to the framework and subsequently put in place action plans to enable compliance. Progress towards targets is measured and monitored by teams in the businesses, but we have also developed a Sustainability Assurance Programme, supported by external sustainability auditors.

Over the past year, at Vedanta Ltd. we have worked to embed and implement the Sustainable Development Framework across all our operations. Accordingly, we have been working hard to train and develop our employees and contractors in the framework and to implement the framework's supporting practices and procedures.

We use Vedanta Sustainability Assurance Programme to ensure Framework compliance, including a programme of audits.